6:45AM, AB from Normandy Park, Wa.; picked up GK at his condo in Bellevue, Wa. (near Seattle) where he’d arrived the day before from his home in Medford, OR; loaded GK’s gear in the already nearly full AB’s Chevy 3/4T, 8-foot bed pickup truck. We’ve always expected that we’ve taken too much gear on these trips, but that fact hasn’t encouraged us to bring any less. GK states that he left his cash card in the ATM at the bank last night & plans to call the bank in the morning to have his card sent to Sand Point, Idaho where he can pick it up.

7:15AM, AB & GK arrive at JR’s in Bellevue, AM arrives soon after from Woodinville, Wa. JR presents his brand new 2005 burgundy Jeep Cherokee to the group, at the last minute he traded in his 3 year old vehicle and picked up a new one. Lots of activity loading masses of gear into the van & Jeep including installation of CB antennas and radios. This trip would not be nearly as much fun without our CB’s, there’s always chatter on the radio on a multitude of subjects including; good books read, politics, recounting past trips and promoting fly choices for the coming trip. In addition, the coordination between vehicles is essential. We can’t imagine doing a multiple vehicle trip without some sort of radio communications.

After our packing is completed, JR treats all to a great breakfast of frittata, fresh baked goods, juice & great coffee.

8:15AM, 58 degrees, we leave JR’s with AM in the lead. All of our trips in the last few years have had some sort of "mini-disaster" before we could get out of town and we were all wondering what it might be this year. It didn’t take long to find out….. AB & AM are chatting up our anticipations of the trip as we drove by the eastbound access ramp to Interstate 90. JR, with GK aboard, calls on the CB, "Where are you guys going?, then guides us thru the maze of roads at the interchange back to the onramp narrowly missing being clipped by a Subura as we made our final U-turn! We’ve gone less than 2 miles and the CB’s have already come in handy, but we were glad that we’d gotten our annual disaster out of the way with little consequence.

JR’s Jeep has 155 miles on the odometer and AM’s van is standing at 82,934 miles. Ten miles down the freeway; we stop in the town of Issaquah, Wa. to gas up AM’s van.

An uneventful 298 mile drive across Washington State and we arrived in Spokane (12:22 pm, 82 F) with instructions from MS for a "shortcut" to his house. Well, as most shortcuts go, it seemed longer than our usual route, likely stemming from our uneasy feeling of being lost.

1:12PM, Arrived at MS’s beautiful country home, located near the Idaho boarder of Spokane, Wa. Admiring MS’s garden & new, huge pole-barn garage while loading his gear into the Jeep. Mike his the new Jeep with a rod case – scaring all that he would have the honor of the first scratch on the two week old car!! - fortunately all he impacted was the trailer hitch but, hey, someone has to be the first...? We now have 20 rods loaded….that should be enough for 5 guys to fish for a week…..shouldn’t it? We also realize at this point that everyone has purchased a case of water & a case of Gatorade plus a pile of snacks, the weight of which had both vehicles down on the overload springs. We cheerfully elect Mike to be the treasurer what with all his number skills!!

Leaving MS’s we head for the Flying J truck stop for gas and lunch. MS shows us a secret shortcut that has the scenic advantage of getting stopped by a train delay of what seemed to be 20 minutes. Lunch at the Flying J reminded us of the goodtimes from our 2004 trip where we often had fine cuisine at the Flying J in Cokeville, Wyoming.

Leaving the Flying J at 3 pm (and 81F) we head east on I-90, turn north on Hwy. 95 at Coeur d’ Alene, Idaho, proceeding through the Idaho towns of Hayden Lake, Athol, Sandpoint (a Starbucks here!), and Bonners Ferry (picked up snacks at a gas station run by Amish – now that presents an interesting conundrum doesn't it?). Crossing Lake Ponderay on a long highway bridge, we note a great bicycle path on the bridge – Schweitzer ski resort is off to our left. Continuing on Hwy. 2 East, we then cross the border into Montana (404 trip miles)(75 degrees) at 5:20PM and into the Mountain Time Zone were we reset our watches to 6:20PM.

The talk turns to needing a Montana fishing license if we plan to fish this evening and the fact that it’s getting late enough that the stores may be closed. At 6:35PM we pull into Troy, Montana and stopped at the first gas station mini-mart we find. The clerk said they don’t sell licenses, but the IGA grocery store down the street does. As we enter the IGA store…..now this is a large, clean, modern grocery store just like the one in your town…..we’re stopped in our tracks. The walls around the entire store are filled with deer, elk, moose, goat and bear heads and a large mounted salmon. Wow!!! Our kind of grocery store!! We must finally be in the real Montana! Wandering around the entire store, we take-in all the mounts when AB decides the moose looks hungry and AM takes a picture. 

IGA Store in Troy, Montana

Out-of-State annual Montana licenses lightened our wallets by $69.25 each. Now we could have bought our licenses at another store close-by to the IGA – the infamous Montana store called "Booze and Bait". Now you might think I make this up but, no, it is very real – speaks volumes for where we are – also interesting to note it is already closed!! Maybe the clientele run more to the morning rush-hour crowd – sort of a Montana Starbuck's to get you going in the morning. (Want some worms with that bourbon?)

We stopped at the Treasure Mountain Restaurant & Casino where we had a great meal….and AB won a $1.00 on the deuces-wild poker machine….Yahoo!

After dinner we headed north from Libby on Hwy. 37, then turn downstream on River Road to the Linehan’s "Riverhouse". We’d seen pictures of the Riverhouse in the Linehan’s brochures, but nothing prepared us for what we saw as we drove down the driveway. The Riverhouse was spectacular! A great 4-bedroom, 2-bath home with a satellite TV in the living room framed by large windows overlooking the Kootenai River. The patio had a gas BBQ and comfy chairs where you can watch deer walking thru the lush, apple treed and flowered yard while trout were sipping flies just a few feet away. No mosquitoes!! We didn’t watch the trout for long; we quickly unpacked and hit the river with our fly rods. The Riverhouse far exceeded our expectations!

Front of House - that's the Kootenai River in the backyard

AB and GK elect to explore the denizens of the fish since they are right here!!

Excellent Landscaping

Back patio with soft chairs - great for sipping scotch - nary a mosquito when we were here!!

Apples in the trees!  Deer are here all the time as you might expect!

Side and Back view of River House

We came off the river at dark after catching a few trout. We found a complete collection of Trout Unlimited TV (w/ Tim as host) tapes next to the video player and watched a few of our favorite episodes, which served to raise our anticipation of fishing with Tim the next day. Tim contacted us about 10PM to make arrangements to meet he & his guides the next morning for a float down the Kootenai. We would actually make a later float for the day starting at noon and ending up sometime about dark (which was after 9 pm). Tim felt the fishing would be better with the afternoon hatch and the evening hatch as well. He thought we would be fishing terrestials, hopper/droppers, PMD's, and Caddis. 4-5 weight rods would be perfect. 11PM lights out, with dreams of trout jumping in our heads. (for those inquiring, I heard train whistles and connecting clangs from trains 1 am and 4 am. Libbyians (Libbyites?) need to be sound sleepers!)